Dressing for ‘Dinner at Eight…’

Posted by Winifred on October 1st, 2013

Dinner at Eight 1933

Author of “The Lowland” Jhumpa Lahiri, in a recent New York Times interview confessed if she could be any character from literature she would be Sebastian Flyte from “Brideshead Revisited.” She chose him, for the early parts of his life, because she has always wanted to dress for dinner. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Andre Leon Talley lamented the casualness of today’s dress. Repeatedly coming back to the theme of gloves. “It’s about gloves, O.K., darling?” “It’s about gloves. Listen.”

We’re listening, we were drawn to vintage fashion because we too desired to inject more theatre and spectacle into our lives. We were disappointed that Andre Leon Talley had emerald green boots made by Manolo Blahnik to match an emerald green spanish cape made by Nicolas Ghesquière, but did not wear them. He had nowhere to wear them to he said. We felt sure that he was to kind to create the occassion, rather than awaiting it to come.

Rest assured, there is hope for elegant dress yet. The cut out dress by Adrian in the 1933 film Dinner at Eight still has reach on the Fall lineup and even Spring. We will have to do more work to see which gloves to pair with what…